Categories
dark night of the soul

Ten Steps of Love through the Dark Night

There had been so many interpretations of the DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL that I deemed it an accountability to post what ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS wrote about it with utmost sincerity of heart in the light of the purest Grace that had been made available to man to understand heaven’s mysteries.

His writings had been quoted and misquoted a great number of times, perverted to infuse some truth into some subtle lies that seek only to deceive people.  Let none be fooled or misguided.

  • The dark night of the soul is a journey of the spirit, a journey of  love towards her greatest LOVE, who is GOD, a personal God that helps us along the difficult path of learning what it really means and what it really takes to be able to love fully.
  • The dark night of the soul is not about the eradication of the personality, but the transformation of the soul into a living likeness with Christ.  This likeness is unto a perfection of the capacity to give and receive love, and not to become mindless zombies with no personality of its own.
  • The dark night of the soul is not a meaningless state of confusion and depression because of sin or of rebelliousness, but of submitting one’s soul upon God’s hands, as a clay is submitted unto the hands of the Master Potter.  The soul is thus like the clay and becomes a master work of art, but it remains to be a creation of the Potter.
  • The dark night of the soul is a not a void or an empty place we are thrust into whenever we reach a spiritual depression after self-seeking spiritual ecstasies that leave us addicted from one encounter to another.
  • The purpose of the dark night is not the “spiritual high” of awareness or knowledge after we have been purged of our impurities, but a deeper loving intimacy with God. In this way, the dark night became a test of one’s faithfulness to that love even if the soul in no way receives the usual joys it experiences when one is in the presence of her greatest Love.

Having said the above points, we may now proceed to an excerpt of what St. John of the Cross wrote:

Continue reading “Ten Steps of Love through the Dark Night”
Categories
carrying the cross

Two crosses we must bear

Of all the crosses
we must bear in life
these two are the most painful:

that we cannot be loved enough

and that we cannot love enough
the people we care about the most

Categories
life after death

Is Eternity a Curse?

Many people work tirelessly just to find out if there is indeed life after death. For the old alchemists, there is no greater joy than to find the elixir of life. In recent times, NDEs or near death experiences have become more prevalent and are sought for proof of the life beyond. We all seem to long for immortality, and not many are willing to accept that this life is all we’ve got.

But is eternity always a blessing? Shall we be happy to find out the mere fact that we are all eternal and that we shall never really die? Is that the end of all our sufferings?

Many Christians do not think so, for with the existence of eternal life and heaven, the existence of hell also comes into play. For Eastern Religions, too, the succession of never ending reincarnations seem more like a curse than a blessing, a curse that should be broken through enlightenment. For atheists, a vision of a life lived over again is empty compared to the valuable moment that will never pass our way again.

To some extent, I believe in that. In my own belief, “Hell” indeed is being stuck. This curse is hence symbolised by the circle, which is the false symbol of eternity and perfection. The circle is like the number zero, a life lived that merely goes back where it came from and amounts to nothing in the end. It is the eradication of the self and the absorption of everything into nothingness.

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Perfection for me is symbolized by the infinity sign, a sign telling us that though life can be eternal, it is not zero, that though there can be unity, the separate persons embracing each other are not eradicated.

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This infinity sign however was cut into two circles thru sin, hence, we were trapped in endless and meaningless cycles. We were separated from God and from perfectly loving each other. Hence came the bar between the two circles, a bar remedied by Jesus thru the cross. It is the cross that bridged the gap and restored perfection in infinity, a perfection of love, for where there is no love, there is no need for eternity.

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This article was written by Jocelyn Soriano at http://itakeoffthemask.com  You are free to republish this article as long as original author is cited and a link back to this website is provided.

Categories
Divine Mercy

Can Man Save Himself?

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If man can help himself
he would have helped himself
a long time ago

but man is trapped
in a duality
that is so easily imbalanced on one side
which is that of darkness

how so you may say
how was a conclusion
leaning on to the negative
arrived at
in a world of duality
where both light and darkness
should have had an equal pull on all things?

If it is not in truth
leaning towards the negative,
why then the corruption
that follows all things born of the flesh?
why is death the fate
of all men after his birth?

Children are born with infirmities
and sickness follows man
all the days of his life
til the grave

It’s as though there is but an appointed time
given him
to live
to choose
to be redeemed

Before a final destiny is reached

A destiny that has only been delayed
so he can be lifted up
so he can avoid the complete fall
where he has been heading to all along…

‘However greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree
prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire.
-St.John of the Cross

Categories
psalms

Psalm of a Wounded Soul

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O wounded soul
who can understand thee
if not the God
who created thee?

Who can bear with thy sorrow
and who can fathom thy tears
who can plunge into your darkness
and bring some light therein
where light has been forgotten
where warmth is nowhere
and no sympathy is afforded thee

Yea I shall cry out to my God
who knows me
and who will always be with me

Yea even in the darkness
I am not alone
for Thou has remembered me
and Thou has saved me
when I knew not even
that I can be saved

This psalm was written by Jocelyn Soriano for http://itakeoffthemask.com  You are free to republish this as long as the original author is acknowledged and a link back to the website is provided.